Wide deployment of renewable energy sources that are both commercially viable and environmentally benign unquestionably ranks as one of today's global grand challenges. Such technologies will not only fuel economic growth and contribute to global environmental sustainability, but also reduce our dependence on exhaustible fossil fuels in the coming decades. Ocean power remains a very high potential but under-utilized source for clean energy that would accomplish these objectives.
The Energy Information Administration estimates that global electricity consumption will increase from 18 to 32 trillion kWh between 2006 and 2030, reflecting an annual growth rate of 2.4%. Coal power is forecast to deliver 42% of this global increase, followed by renewables at 24% and natural gas at 23%, with nuclear power contributing the balance. U.S. electricity consumption will increase at a slower rate, climbing from 4.1 to 5.2 trillion kWh over this time period. Coal power is forecast to deliver 39% of this domestic increase, followed by renewables at 32% and natural gas at 18%. The bulk of the contribution from renewables is projected to come from new hydropower rather than less environmentally compromising renewables.
The identification and development of new cost-effective, energy-efficient and environmentally friendly power generation technologies will result in economic, health and security benefits to the US and global populations. Since clean energy generation is generally based on local resources, these technologies can help fuel the local economies of coastal areas through job creation and the availability of inexpensive energy to fuel local industries.
A high proportion of the market share growth in the clean energy sector will go to energy sources that have the capital efficiency, cost effectiveness, and resource availability to scale quickly over the next two decades. Conventional approaches to harvesting ocean energy have been delinquent across all three of these criteria—they are too capital intensive, have non-competitive energy costs, and require very specific ocean environments which limits the number of potential locations and thus the scale of impact. As such, conventional ocean energy systems are not considered to be in the same class as wind, solar photovoltaic, solar thermal, and geothermal when it comes to impact potential.
The cost of electricity from conventional devices is estimated to be 3-5 times that of coal power. Without radical departures from the conventional approach tried to date, it is plausible that ocean energy will never be a material part of the global energy mix.